Censored by Voice of America in 1950, re-interviewed in the 1980s, Józef Czapski gets a plaque in Prague By Ted Lipien On December 21, 2021, a plaque at Józef Czapski’s birthplace in Prague, the Czech Republic, was unveiled in a ceremony attended by ambassadors from Poland, the Holy See, Lithuania, and Estonia. The Embassy of Italy, which now occupies the…
The News Bureau room of the Office of War Information (OWI), November 1942, at about the same time Howard Fast started writing Voice of America newscasts. The photograph’s official caption said: “It is arranged much the same way as the city room of a daily newspaper. Here, war news of the world is disseminated. In the foreground, are editors’ desks handling such special services as trade press, women’s activities, and campaigns. The news desk is in the background.” Smith, Roger, photographer. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540.
VOA logo, 2019.Yankee Doodle Voice of America (VOA) signature tune reportedly proposed by VOA chief news writer (1942-1943) Howard Fast who later received the 1953 Stalin International Peace Prize.
“I established contact at the Soviet embassy with people who spoke English and were willing to feed me important bits and pieces from their side of the wire. I had long ago, somewhat facetiously, suggested ‘Yankee Doodle’ as our musical signal, and now that silly little jingle was a power cue, a note of hope everywhere on earth…” 1
Howard Fast, 1953 Stalin Peace Prize winner, best-selling author, journalist, former Communist Party member and reporter for its newspaper The Daily Worker, decribing his role as the chief writer of Voice of America (VOA) radio news translated into multiple languages and rebroadcast for four hours daily to Europe through medium wave transmitters leased from the BBC in 1942-1943. Howard Fast, Being Red (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990), pp. 18-19.
Notes:
Howard Fast, Being Red (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990), 18-19. ↩
OPINION AND ANALYSIS Cold War Radio Museum By Ted Lipien Note: The article has been updated to include information that Heda Margolius Kovály had worked in the 1970s as a freelance reporter for the Voice of America Czechoslovak Service under a radio name Kaca Kralova. A declassified CIA report from 1953 featured a claim by a still unidentified Slovak source…
Cold War Radio Museum Jan Ciechanowski, Polish Ambassador in Washington during World War II, helped to expose Soviet propaganda and U.S. government propagandists who in domestic media and in “Voice of America” shortwave radio broadcasts for foreign audiences spread disinformation originating in Soviet Russia. Photo: Jan Ciechanowski, Polish Minister, 11/30/25, LC-DIG-npcc-15231 (digital file from original), Library of Congress Prints…
Cold War Radio Museum Updated: January 2024 A State Secret Polish children from World War II Santa Rosa refugee camp, Guanajuato, Mexico. Source: Embajada de Polonia en México, Wikipedia. The date and photographer are unknown. CC BY 3.0. How the Roosevelt Administration Shipped Polish Refugee Orphans to Mexico In Locked Trains and Lied About It to Protect Stalin The Untold…
Cold War Radio Museum A recent (2017) independent study by the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) focusing on Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts to Iran has found that under Obama administration officials these broadcasts “perpetuated to audiences the appearance of pro-regime [Iran] propaganda, rather than objective reporting, on the part of both the VOA and Farda.” Radio Farda broadcasts to…
By Ted Lipien Voice of America Polish Service Program “All About America” (Ameryka w Przekroju), July 9, 1983 Irena Radwańska Broni: Returning to the U.S. citizenship oath ceremony at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson would certainly approve of using his home for this purpose. … Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws…
Cold War Radio Museum New York, New York. 1943 “United Nations” exhibition of photographs presented by the United States Office of War Information (OWI) on Rockefeller Plaza. Listening to broadcasts of President Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and Chiang Kai-shek, heard every half-hour from a loudspeaker at one end of the frame containing the Atlantic Charter. This frame is surrounded by four…
Cold War Radio Museum After leaving the White House in 1961, former President Dwight D Eisenhower briefly alluded in his memoirs Waging Peace (1965) to the Voice of America’s (VOA) wartime record of propaganda collusion with Soviet Russia. As a military leader during World War II, he must have been still upset to have mentioned it years later during the…
Cold War Radio Museum Elmer Davis, Director, Office of War Information (OWI), Alfred T. Palmer, photographer. Part of: Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540. Soviet Russia’s lie that Hitler and Nazi Germans and not Stalin and Soviets communists were responsible for the mass execution murder of…
